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“This is stupid, I can’t let you do this.” Rodimus paced up and down his office, flailing his arms around dramatically, as if this lent extra authority to his words. “You’ll be ruined, Drift. I’d have to exile you, strip you of your brand!”
He wasn’t wrong, Drift knew that, but he was too tired to put up with Rodimus’s theatrics. “When you’re mean to me, it’s because you think you’re superior,” Drift said, since he was speaking his mind.
That statement startled Rodimus out of his ranting. “Now wait a minute–”
“When Ratchet’s mean,” Drift hesitated, afraid of revealing too much, “it’s because he wants me to be honest, because he wants me to be better.” He had been thinking a lot about Ratchet lately, about all of their late shift conversations in the Medbay and of how he was going to miss them.
Rodimus missed the point. “We all want to be better–”
“Ratchet doesn’t think I really converted, that it’s all an act,” Drift explained. “That I’m looking for atonement for all the harm I’ve caused.” He had to get his friend and his caption to see his point. There was too much at stake for Rodimus to, well, pull a Rodimus.
Rodimus wheedled to reassure his third-in-command. “We all did things during the war–”
“I saw a vision, Rodimus,” Drift said, voice soft. “One that felt all too real.” He could see Rodimus gearing up to refute him; Drift had to pull out the big guns. “In it, I saw everyone die; the entire crew of the Lost Light was slaughtered.”
That got Rodimus to shut up.
“The only way to prevent what I saw is to keep you as captain,” Drift continued, growing more confident, “to keep you on the quest. You’ll save everyone, I know it.”
“Is that why you’re going to take the blame for Overlord? Because of a vision?” Rodimus asked. He tried to keep the disbelief out of his voice.
“I swear I saw the future,” Drift was firm, “and this is the only way to prevent it.”
“I don’t believe that,” Rodimus said. He didn’t believe in no-win scenarios. He carried half a broken Matrix, he could do anything. “There’s always another way, there is always another solution.”
“I’ve made up my mind,” Drift said. He was sympathetic to Rodimus’s feelings, but they paled compared to the needs of the many. “And you already know, there isn’t another solution.”
The stare that Rodimus fixed upon him was indignant and defeated. “Please give me time.”
“The crew wants answers,” Drift said, “and they deserve them.” They had all been beaten too badly, had lost too much to let the Overlord incident get swept under the rug.
The wall dented under Rodimus’s balled fist. “I can’t believe you’re asking me to use you as a scapegoat.”
Drift couldn’t meet his friend’s optics. “I don’t want to do this but there’s a wider universe out there that needs you. It doesn’t need me.”
“Come on, I need you,” Rodimus insisted. “And Ultra Magnus needs you. Hell, even Ratchet–”
Ratchet, it always came back to Ratchet. “Once when we were really going at it, something about fate versus Free Will” Drift said, it was one of many arguments they liked to have, “Ratchet told me, ‘We are all cursed to be free.’”
“Sounds a little poetic for our resident Hatchet,” Rodimus teased, desperate to lighten the mood.
“You’re right, he was paraphrasing an Earth philosopher. Ratchet was telling me that because there is no Primus–” Drift’s lip tightened even saying it outloud, “that it’s our choices that matter. That with no Afterspark waiting we have to do things for the here and now. Every act of kindness, every act of cruelty is something we have to live with. We can’t act in the hopes of a future after our deaths."
"I didn’t agree with him but it was something else that he said.” Drift sighed, the conversation was seared into his mind. “He said, ‘Even though I think your philosophy’s flawed, you’ve been making the right decisions.’” Thinking about it made him want to cry. “It was one of the nicest things he’s ever said to me.”
“That’s–” Rodimus’s arms were crossed, like he could protect himself from what he was hearing, “heavy.”
It was. “That’s why I need to do this, I have to take the fall,” Drift said. This time, when he looked into his captain’s eyes, Drift could see that he had finally gotten through. Now came the final piece. “There’s just one thing I ask,” Drift placed his hand on Rodimus’s shoulder, making his statement into an oath, “you have to promise me to keep Ratchet safe.”
A million tiny emotions crossed Rodimus’s face. “Wow,” he said, everything clicked suddenly into place. So many previous confidential discussions took on new clarity. Rodimus wanted to say he saw this coming, but he really hadn't. “I thought you just had a medic crush not a—” He couldn’t bring himself to say it, it would make this entire surreal exchange real.
“After four million years,” Drift said, his voice hard, “you think I have a crush?” It felt insulting to put such a small word onto emotions with such churning depths.
“Drift,” Rodimus scoffed, “you can’t possibly be doing all of this for Ratchet.”
“I’m doing this for everyone,” Drift reiterated. “Asking you to watch out for him is the only thing I’m asking for myself.” He squeezed Rodimus’s shoulder, hard, allowing that bit of Deadlock to shine through. “That’s the selfish part, the one thing just for me, because you have no idea what I’m giving up by walking away now.” He bared his fangs, letting Rodimus see his full self in all its beauty and ugliness.
“I could have him, Roddy,” Drift said, “I saw it in the vision; I let you suffer exile for Overlord and I could finally be with him. It would be everything I ever wanted.” Drift’s anger came out in a strangled cry. “But then I'd watch him die. I want to stop it and I can’t and I see the light dim, I see him tortured because of me and I can’t, I can’t–”
For the first time in a very, very long time, Drift found himself weeping. Boisterous boasting was more Rodimus’s speed but in the face of Drift’s suffering, he let that go. Rodimus gathered his friend into his arms and held on, drawing that vulnerability into himself. He could be strong in this way for his friend, he could do this.
“Okay,” Rodimus whispered, “I promise I’ll take care of him. You have my word.”
With that reassurance, with that oath made, Drift found the strength to confront the future, to once again be alone. He could live with exile, he could even live with the prospect of a love unfulfilled as long as Ratchet was safe.
It was unfortunate then, that on the Lost Light’s next away mission, Rodimus would fail his promise.